Since our founding in 1873, we have been committed to producing the highest-quality
beers. Our portfolio of brands is designed to appeal to a wide range of consumer
tastes, styles and price preferences. Until our acquisition of CBL in February
2002, we operated and sold our beverages predominately in North America and in
select international markets. The CBL acquisition expanded our international presence
to include significant operations and sales in the United Kingdom.
Our Products
We own or license all of our trademarks for all of our brands. Brands sold
primarily in the Americas include: Coors Light®, Coors Original®, Coors® Non-Alcoholic,
Extra Gold®, Zima®, George Killian’s® Irish Red TM Lager, Keystone®, Keystone
Light®, Keystone Ice®, Blue MoonTM Belgian White Ale and Mexicali®. We also
sell the Molson family of brands in the United States through a joint venture.
Brands sold primarily through CBL include: Carling®, Worthington®, Caffrey’s®,
Reef®, ScreamersTM and Stones®. We also sell Grolsch® in the United Kingdom
through a joint venture.
In the United Kingdom in 2003, we achieved considerable success with the continued
roll-out of Carling Extra Cold, which is dispensed at on-trade locations (pubs,
clubs, restaurants and hotels) at two degrees centigrade, four degrees cooler
than traditional English draft lagers. Additionally, in the last quarter of
the year, we introduced Coors Fine Light Beer to the on-trade channel. In January
2004, we launched this beer into the off-trade channel (retail and wholesale)
and commenced television advertising for the product. In the United States in
2004, we plan to introduce a low-carb beer called Aspen EdgeTM, and a variety
of new flavored Zima products, collectively called Zima XXXTM (in select US
markets).
In the United Kingdom, in addition to supplying our own brands, we sell other
beverage companies’ brands to our on-premise customers so as to be able to provide
them with a full range of products for their retail outlets. These factored
brand sales are included in our financial results, increasing our net sales
and cost of goods sold, but the related volume is not included in our reported
sales volumes.
Our malt beverages compete with numerous above-premium, premium, low-calorie,
popular-priced, non-alcoholic and imported brands. These competing brands are
produced by national, regional, local and international brewers. We compete
most directly with Anheuser-Busch (AB) and SABMiller (Miller), the dominant
beer companies in the US industry.
Our principal competitors are Scottish Courage Ltd., Interbrew UK Ltd. and
Carlsberg-Tetley Ltd. We are the United Kingdom’s second-largest brewer, with
an approximate 20% market share (excluding factored brands sales).
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